The south Division police of Banashankari police have arrested Six persons on the charges of extortion and recovered Rs.1.6 lakhs worth of valuables along with Rs.95,000 cash and the equipments used in the conspiracy of crime has been seized from their possession.

The accused used to threaten garment shop owners after making their sting videos to extort money.

The accused has been identified as Santosh.C.alias Santosh Simha,34, resident of Nagarbhavi,N.Ashok Kumar, 33, resident of Nagarbhavi,V.K.Mahadev,31, resident of Hosakerehalli,Rakesh Gowda, 23,resident of Jalahalli,Naveen P, 21, resident of Jalahalli and Anand S,34, resident of Kengeri.

The complainant had stated that the accused came to their shop, took visuals of their products and even misbehaved with one of their female employees.They later alleged we were selling duplicate brands and tried to extort money.

Modus Operandi:

Rakesh and Naveen used to shortlist the local textile shops selling branded clothes and the others used to go to their shops with the cameras,mikes,speakers and an Omni car along with their news channel logo to take the videos.Later they used to threaten shop owners that they will go live about fake brands being sold by them.Using the same modus operandi the accused had cheated and extorted money from four textile shops in Banashankari,Banaswadi,Bagalagunte and Yelahanka New Town police station limits.

Special team were formed to nab the culprits.

DCP South,Dr.S.D.Sharanappa,told media persons,that a shop owner of Stylo garment located in K R Road registered a complaint in Banashankari police station stating that about 5-6 unknown person barged into his shop and captured video of his garment shop and threatened them to telecast in their channel about the selling of fake branded clothes and expose them and register case against them so to not telecast this news in their channel they threatened me and my employees too and they even misbehaved with our women staff and they abused her too in filthy language and extorted Rs.1lakh and even they took Rs.65,000 worth of clothes from them as the shop owner who got doubt on them he registered a complaint against them and as soon as the complaint was filed a special team was led under the supervision of ACP Jayanagar,Sub-Division H.Srinivas,PI Banashankari,Puttaswamy and his crime staff swung into action and rushed to the crime scene and after analysing the CCTV footage our team started the investigation and they got to know the news channel has not yet been launched and based on technical inputs our team tracked two of the gang members and during the course of investigation the accused spilled the beans and based on their statement our team were successful in nabbing the other accused,and with tremendous efforts by the team all the six accused were arrested and during the course of investigation it is revealed that the accused the owner of News Channel which is not yet launched was identified as Santhosh alias Santhosh Simha and to launch his channel across karnataka to collect funds he hatched this plan or idea and for this he appointed 6 people.Santosh used to run a daily newspaper in the name of Praja Prathinidhi,after few years he registered the same news paper into news channel in her wife Ashwini’s name and he even had his own Human Rights organization group.

V.K.Mahadev and Ashok Kumar used to work as reporters,Rakesh and Naveen used to work as informer and santhosh Simha’s brother in law Anand used to work as camera man.Santhosh Simha was running financial crisis to launch his news channel so for this he and his associates hatched a plan to extort money from garment shop owners by doing a sting operation and for this the accused Rakesh and Naveen used to search and shortlist the garment shops and after identifying and getting information about the garment shop that they are selling fake branded clothes they used to visit the shop and would do their sting video and after doing a sting operation they used to threaten the owner of the shop that we have done a sting story on your shop that you are selling fake branded clothes and we will expose you by telecasting the same in our channel by this way they used to blackmail the shopkeepers and extort money from them so now the notorious criminals are behind bars and with their arrest we have detected four cases registered against them in, Banashankari,Basavangudi,Bagalgunte,and Yelahanka New Town Police stations and the team has seized 2cars,as 1 Omni and 1 Innova car,along with their video camera,3 Computers,CPU with Rs.95,000 cash and Rs.65,000 worth of clothes,logo,mic and other things which were used in the conspiracy of crime has been seized from their possession and a case has been registered in Banashankari police station and further investigation is on and all the accused are cooling their heels in judicial custody, and finally Bengaluru Police Commissioner,T.Suneel Kumar,has appreciated Addl CP,Seemanth Kumar Singh,DCP South,Dr.S.D.Sharanappa,ACP Jayanagar,Sub-Division,H.Sreenivas,PI, Banashankari,Puttaswamy,PSI, Girimalappa.U,and his crime staff as,Muthanayak,Sreemanth Khemu Rathod,Toushif Ahmed,Venkatesh and Manjunath has done a exemplary and commendable job in nabbing the notorious extortionist who used to extort money from garment shop owners in the name of Praja Prathinidhi news channel which is yet to be launched and by using their criminal tactics to earn easy money has been busted by the team he added.

PRAMESH S JAIN

Newspapers Association of India

The objective of NAI is to highlight the problems which have been plaguing the small and medium newspaper industry for the past so many years. A common platform at the national level was created for the members, to establish personal Contact with each other and have interactions on related problems and take up the same, with concerned authorities, on a collective basis.